Quentin Tarantino is a brand unto himself, one of the very few Hollywood directors who can open a movie simply because his name is attached to it.
While his output is not as prolific as other directors at his level, his track record in terms of quality-over-quantity is virtually unmatched in the industry. Seriously — the guy has never made a truly bad movie. As his masterpiece Kill Bill: Vol 2 turned 15 years old this week, we’re celebrating that milestone by doing the rank and file thing on every QT movie.
9. ‘Death Proof’ (2007)
The second of two movies comprising Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse experiment, Death Proof is the better-directed entry as Tarantino delivers his nod to B-movies like Vanishing Point. No one loves the sound of Tarantino’s dialogue more than he does, and watching him over-indulge with it to the point where he feels drunk on it hurts Death Proof’s pacing more than it helps it.
The first half of the movie sets up one of the best villains the filmmaker has ever created, the homicidal Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell). The second half pits him against a trio of very badass ladies that end up turning the tables on their stalker. Russell steals the movie with a performance unlike any he has ever given before, and the third act is a near-constant car chase that ranks up there with Mad Max: Fury Road.
8. ‘The Hateful Eight’ (2015)
The marketing for Hateful Eight made a huge deal about how Tarantino shot the film in 70mm VistaVision — even though most of the three-hour movie takes place indoors. The confined location fails to deliver the visual splendor the film format deserves, while the “Mean-with-a-capital-M” characters constantly hit the same one or two angry notes to the point where their antics, while well-written, dull viewers into wishing the movie would just get on with it.
Eight’s caustic characters and bloated plotting keep the audience at arm’s length; this is the first Tarantino movie where it feels like the filmmaker’s reach fell short of his grasp.
7. ‘Inglourious Basterds’ (2009)
(Credit: Universal)
Basterds is a revisionist WWII epic that plays fast and loose with the war and Hitler’s fate as it tells the story of a group of commandos led by Brad Pitt on a Dirty Dozen-style mission to score Nazi scalps and win the war. While audiences loved the film judging by its box office success, its revisionist take on history doesn’t quite hold up on subsequent viewings.
What does hold up, however, is Christoph Waltz’s Oscar-winning turn as the methodical Nazi Hans Landa. (This would be the first of two pairings between Waltz and Tarantino that would net the actor a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; the second was Django Unchained.)
6. ‘Reservoir Dogs’ (1992)
“Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy, or are you gonna bite?”
Mr. Blonde’s chilling line is just one of many quotable bits of dialogue from Tarantino’s first feature film, a lean, time-jumping caper centered on a professional crew of thieves coming undone in the wake of a heist gone wrong. Few directors pull off as complete and accomplished a first feature as Tarantino does here; the low-budget production’s rough edges are part of its charm. The memorable characters, from Mr. Pink to Blonde, drive the narrative to its bloody, hail-of-bullets conclusion. There’s a reason why the film’s poster adorns many a college dorm room wall — it’s the least fans can do to celebrate one of the ‘90s best movies. And few people who have watched this movie have ever listened to Stealers Wheel’s ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ the same way again.
4. & 5. ‘Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2’ (2003 – 2004) – TIED
Kill Bill was one of the first “event movies” of the early 2000s; the iconic trailer’s use of the tune “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” instantly carved a spot for itself in pop culture. The epic, bloody affair, released in two parts, served as QT’s most commercial vehicle at the time as it blended his love for revenge tales with his passion for Shaw Brothers martial arts movies. The resulting two movies feature some of the filmmaker’s best dialogue, characters, and camera work. While Tarantino’s usual tendency to pay homage to other filmmakers veers into outright Xeroxing a few shots from notable films at times, Kill Bill is pure Tarantino. The result is that watching the two films is like mainlining his and the Shaw Brothers’ greatest hits simultaneously.
3. ‘Jackie Brown’ (1997)
Tarantino’s first (and, so far, only) adaptation is arguably his most underrated film. The Oscar-winner turns Elmore Leonard’s crime novel Rum Punch into a dense, slow-burn “crime doesn’t pay” drama with its roots firmly indebted to the ‘70s exploitation films, in which star Pam Grier made a name for herself.
Tarantino has had a knack for resurrecting the careers of actors and finding hidden gems. Pam Grier got to headline a gritty film once again as the titular character. The impressive ensemble also includes Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forrester, Robert De Niro, and Michael Keaton, with each actor delivering career best-level work. Tarantino’s dialogue and Leonard’s stable of quirky mid-level criminals are perfect for each other, and Jackie Brown is a near-perfect movie.
2. ‘Django Unchained’ (2012)
This revisionist Western embraces the genre’s tropes while simultaneously flipping them on their head as Tarantino crafts a bloody, anamorphic love letter to Sergio Leone and the late ‘60s/early ’70s run of gunslinging guilty pleasures. The tightly-structured script clicks into place like safe tumblers, as Jamie Foxx’s Django carves a bloody (and chatty) path of violence en route to save the love of his life from some very bad men.
As good as Christoph Waltz’s Oscar-winning performance is as the affluent German bounty hunter working with Django, Leonardo DiCaprio was robbed of an Oscar (and a nomination) for his frightening, scene-stealing turn as the villainous slave owner Calvin Candie.
1. ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994)
The impact of Tarantino’s landmark film is still felt today, with its needle drops and clever, self-referential dialogue helping form a new cinema language that was often imitated (Two Days In the Valley) but never matched or surpassed. Tarantino winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar — but losing Best Picture to Forrest Gump — is still one of the great mistakes the Academy wishes they could take back.
